• Badabinski@kbin.earth
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    10 days ago

    Hey, I think some nuance was lost over the imperfect medium of text. Here’s what OP is getting at—when someone ignores their emotions, they don’t just go away. Emotions are just signals from the body about what is good for it and what is bad for it. Emotions are the body telling someone what it needs. If emotions are ignored, then the body isn’t getting what it needs, so it sends stronger signals. When I don’t eat, I get hungrier (until I start starving and my body begins eating itself, anyways). When I don’t tend to an injury, it hurts more. When I’m resentful and I don’t do anything about my feelings of resentment, those feelings grow in strength and force.

    Any person who has been told by society that they should disregard their emotions will have a body which is screaming its discontent at them. I’m a man and I was raised to hide and repress my feelings (although I was never really into extreme toxic masculinity). It was fucking agonizing, and I became so, so sensitive to things. It took years of therapy for me to learn that the body keeps the score and that I had to feel and express my feelings, just like I had to eat or bandage a cut.

    Anyone who has suffered from emotional self-neglect will be sensitive. Western society pushes men to neglect themselves, so those men will be sensitive. That’s all OP meant. Men who accept their emotions for what they are and tend to them will be much less sensitive and will almost certainly be happier people.

    • dmention7@lemm.ee
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      10 days ago

      Honestly, it’s the

      as a de-scrotum’d testicle

      part that throws me. Makes it sound like they are comparing having normal human emotions to being as overly sensitive as a bare, unprotected testicle.

      • Badabinski@kbin.earth
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        10 days ago

        Yeah, it’s not (in my opinion) the best way to get the idea across. I read that and immediately thought of how it felt when I was emotionally repressed. To me, a de-scrotumed testicle sounds about right, because even the softest and most gentle care was still rough and painful. I can see how someone could read something much less kind in that phrase, however.

        • dmention7@lemm.ee
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          10 days ago

          I had to re-read your original comment to fully get your point, but I hear what you’re saying now.

          (Or maybe I just need an excuse to dip out of this thread and try to bleach the image of a de-scrotum’d testicle from my brain)